Stealth Plumes on Io

Abstract

We suggest that Io's eruptive activity may include a class of previously undetected SO2 geysers. The thermodynamic models for the eruptive plumes discovered by Voyager 'involve low to moderate entropy SO2 eruptions. The resulting plumes are a mixture of solid and gas which emerge from the vent and follow essentially ballistic trajectories. We show that intrusion of silicate magma into buried SO2 deposits can create the required conditions for high entropy eruptions which proceed entirely in the vapor phase. These purely gaseous plumes would have been invisible to Voyager's instruments. Hence, we call them "stealth" plumes. Such eruptions could explain the "patchy" SO2 atmosphere inferred from recent UV and micro-wave spectral observations. The magma intrusion rate required to support the required gas production for these plumes is a negligible fraction of estimated global magma intrusion rates.